Massive flooding has displaced thousands of families in northern Mozambique. Are the camps they are living in a signal of what climate change will bring for so many poor? asks Brian O'Connell.
WHAT HAPPENS after disaster strikes? At Roches Motel, five kilometres from the ferry crossing at Caia, in northern Mozambique, the NGO caravan has long left town. Two months ago, when the waters were at their peak, you'd be lucky to get a patch of ground to pitch your tent on, such was the clamour for space. As the regional centre for co-ordinating the response to flooding, Mozambique's difficulty was, in effect, Caia's opportunity.
Now the motel owner personally offers us a choice of rooms, some of which even have showers and sheets on the beds. Facing the road, the large bar and restaurant where aid workers liked to unwind, is deserted and silent, save for a Bryan Adams soundtrack and hanging flags of the world wallpaper. Our driver takes us to the only good restaurant in town - a corrugated iron shack with plastic tables and chairs.
Ambassadors and visiting dignitaries once stopped here, now we're the only ones, and the once extensive menu has been reduced to chicken and rice or chicken and potatoes, or rice and potatoes. They have beer, but no bread. The owner has since moved on, having taken the NGO dollar, although staff tell us they expect her back next year, once the hard rains fall again. The "emergency" in northern Mozambique is technically over; the waters have receded and many of the emergency response workers are now applying their insight to Burma or China.
Yet for the thousands of families who once lived along the Zambezi, the crisis is ongoing, with forced re-settlement meaning large populations have been relocated to higher ground inland, as climate change continues to dramatically impact on some of the world's poorest communities. It was the first time in living memory the floods came two years in a row in northern Mozambique, and upwards of 100,000 people were affected with over 30,000 hectares of arable land destroyed.
The government's response has been to give families smaller plots of land, often a long distance from their homesteads, in a bid to redefine the demographic. The consensus among climate scientists is that sub-Saharan Africa will get drier year-on-year, and when the rains do come, flooding, such as that experienced here, will continue to increase.
Yet along the Zambezi, just as the floodwaters are receding, farmers are now experiencing crop drought, hard to fathom given the abundance of water. The seasons are becoming less predictable, therefore farming practices built up over generations are no longer able to keep up and adapt. The long-term outlook is bleak for these communities - either they try to shift farming practices or they need to relocate.
Subsistence farmers here often don't have many options. The lie of the land is all they know. As climate change lays siege to traditional farming knowledge, their inherited know-how has become redundant against the shifting vagaries of the changing climate. And it's going to get worse before it gets better.
Chacuma is one of those areas at risk, straddling the expanse of the Zambezi close to where the river meets the Indian Ocean. This year, a resettlement camp nearby had to be moved a further 3km inland, an indication of how extensive the flooding got. Yet, despite the ongoing risks, many inhabitants are reluctant to leave their crops and land.
Among those is Sabado Francisco, who along with his wife and five children, was moved out of Chacuma when the waters came. He shows us the watermark high on the wall of what's left of his grass hut. "I think the water can come again," he says. "It has now happened twice and we didn't think that it could. We don't know any more and everyone around here is looking for higher lands for farming."
Sabado and his family lost many of their possessions, including farm tools and cooking utensils and are struggling to rebuild their lives. "Along with those things, we lost our maize crops and other things we had in the house. When we came back we found they were all gone with the water." When I ask why he thinks the flooding was more severe this year and what might be causing it, Sabado says neighbouring countries are to blame. "This is the water coming mostly from Zambia and Malawi. That's the cause of our problems."
Flooding has always been part of the farming life in this region of Mozambique. In times past, the men of the village stayed on the land while the women and children moved to higher land until it was safe to return. "This year though, the flooding hit really bad and it stayed bad for a whole month," Sabado says,
"Now we have to leave for good, because the government says so. We have to go to the resettlement area, and I'm not comfortable there. There are many diseases and things biting us, and I would prefer to stay here."
The resettlement area of Matilda, where the government has forced Sabado and many of his neighbours to move to, caters for more than 4,000 families. The government wants to move all people of the low-lying area into camps like this one, where they can be serviced with food, water and shelter, with a promise that medical and education facilities will also be centralised.
The area more resembles an overpopulated temporary refugee camp, difficult to access, unless you own a boat or canoe (many don't), and ill-suited to a long-term resettlement strategy. Of the few NGOs which have remained, Irish aid organisation Concern is assisting with education programmes on the ground, ensuring children have materials and provisions.
By relocating here, each family is promised equipment to build a small home, as well as a plot of land 40m wide and 50m long. With many still living in emergency tents pitched only two feet from each other, it's clear the government policy remains aspirational. Many of those we spoke to blame the government for the floods, saying that those in power cannot operate the dams properly and are failing to control the flow of water adequately.
Others point to more ambiguous supernatural reasons. No one here speaks of climate change or global warming. They are not aware that in Ireland, for instance, we pump 10.5 tonnes of carbon per person into the atmosphere. In Mozambique, that figure is 0.1 tonnes.
Sabado takes us to his temporary home, a canvas tent, where he and his family have been living since the floods. "The problem is we can't cook inside because of the material," he says, "so if it's raining we can't cook food. We're waiting for cement and bricks but it hasn't arrived. Also the government has only given us land measuring 20m by 30m and we have no space to grow crops." Yet, even allowing for the cramped conditions, he says his children now prefer to be based here. They feel safer. When I ask him what he would like most, he answers, "a house which we can turn into a home".
But before he can elaborate on the delays in getting much-promised tools and materials, a local government official intervenes and Sabado is reluctant to speak any further. We're led to a less populated part of the camp, where many have homes with basic foundations, although the ground still looks unlikely to yield crops. "Everyone here is happy now," the official says, somewhat unconvincingly.
ENVIRONMENTALIST MARK LYNAS says the fact that Africa is only now being talked of in terms of climate change and its effects is understandable, given that conflict and starvation have dominated so much of the discussion for the last three decades. Now, though, he says the continent is facing a newer challenge - how to acknowledge and respond to the international climate crisis.
"How can whole segments of the population change their way of life overnight?" Lynas asks, "What we're talking about here is a major long-term problem, which can be impacted upon if action is taken. For example, after the Bangladesh cyclone in 1991, which was one of the worst climatic disasters in history, the country invested heavily in cyclone shelter and early warning measures, thereby saving hundreds of thousands of lives since. If a country is well governed, and has some capacity, then it can learn from major climatic episodes."
Yet Naomi Klein takes a more cynical view. Klein's new book, The Shock Doctrine, argues that after major natural disasters, many governments use the opportunity to alter the way land is used, or the way the economy is driven. The underlying question for Klein is how long do the effects of shocks last? She argues that terror and natural disaster are used by governments to propel what she calls "disaster capitalism".
In her world view, there are very few coincidences and she cites the example of the 2004 tsunami, which enabled the government of Sri Lanka move fisherman off beachfront property so that it could be sold to hotel developers. When disaster strikes, she argues, civil rights often go down the flooded swanny, traded for reformed economies and realigned real estate. It's an interesting proposition, and given the way the government in Mozambique controls each resettlement area so forcefully, it may not be without foundation.
The "shock" of relocation and resettlement, often without adequate supplies, continues for thousands in northern Mozambique who, like Sabado, simply want a home and the means to sustain themselves. Yet they are now wholly dependent on the government to provide for them, and their traditional means of survival are no longer viable.
Niamh Garvey, Trócaire's climate change research officer, says that over the last decade, NGOs have had to increasingly adapt their programmes in Africa to take account of the changing climate. "Based on the recent past and the scientific evidence available, this problem is not going to go away," Garvey says. "For us, a huge priority over the last few years has been disaster preparedness. In southern Africa especially it is one of our priority approaches. The way you reduce disaster risk is to build up the resilience of a community to enable them to face these climatic shocks. So by improving the capacity to prepare for the worst, you can mitigate the impact of the disaster. Two of the ways of doing this for example would be risk mapping an area, and then putting in early warning systems, and alerting the most vulnerable."
One of the key approaches for NGO like Trócaire and Concern has been to respond to the climatic disasters and also to try to protect long-term livelihoods.
By resettling a community, initial emergency needs can be met, but sustainability remains an issue, as seen in Mozambique.
"I think that in the future the displacement of people as a result of climate change will become a huge issue," says Garvey. "We need to work hard to increase the resilience of communities so that they don't have to move, and then we need to make livelihoods adaptable to change. It's a huge challenge."